“Oh yes—and perhaps I could mind the baby,” exclaimed Maggie.
“You’d have to,” said the woman. “We don’t keep people for nothing.”
“But there’s him too,” said Maggie, pointing to the Cochin-Chinaman. “I can’t leave him either. He always goes with Alfonso and me.”
The man laughed. “You’re the queerest lot I ever saw,” said he. “But I suppose we must have you all.”
And so it was settled.
Maggie was very much relieved to find that the party was to move away early next morning, and she took care to keep as much out of sight as possible. But the rest of the evening passed without their hearing or seeing anything of the people at the farm, and she hoped that no one had discovered their absence. As soon as it was light next day the horses were harnessed, and the three truants set out with their new friends.
There was another member of the party who came back to the camp just as they were starting, and who drove the green van. His name was Dan, and he was the brother of the man with the gold earrings, a clean-shaved brown young fellow, with dark smooth hair which came forward in a flat lock over either ear. He wore a cap made of rabbit-skin, and he looked after the two horses. Though he took little notice of Maggie she was not afraid of him, for he had a self-contained, serious face, and was so good to the beasts that she knew he must be kind.
Besides this work he did nothing in the camp. His brother was a tinman, but Dan left the pots and pans alone; and it was only when the party was at village fairs that his talents came into play. The horse which drew the smaller van and did the lighter work was a bright chestnut with a fine coat, which Dan groomed ceaselessly. Both animals followed him like dogs, and he could do whatever he pleased with the chestnut, which could jump almost anything. When he rode him, barebacked, at the big fairs, the crowd would look on open-mouthed, shouting as he cleared the hurdles and dropping their pence into the rabbit-skin cap when it was carried round. Once an ill-natured fellow had stuck a thorn into the horse’s flank as he was led by, and Dan had blacked both his eyes before leaving the fair. When the vans were settled in one place, he would often be absent for days together, and nobody knew where he went.
Maggie soon found out that they were making for some woods a few days’ journey off. She was very happy, for she had seen so little of the world outside the farmyard that every new place amused her. The woman was friendly to her in her silent way when she found how careful she was of the baby. Maggie soon learnt to dress and tend it; and she swept out the vans, lit the fires, and in the evening sat on the top step, talking to Alfonso and the Cochin-China cock. They were quite contented too, though they did not live so well as they had done at the farm.
They travelled on, by villages and hill-sides, by moors and by roads. The trees flamed with autumn, and the rose-hips were turning red. At last they drew up in a grassy track which ran through an immense wood, where the sighing of the air in the fir-branches rose and fell in little gusts, and grey-blue wood-pigeons went flapping away down the vistas of stems. Maggie had never imagined such a place, and when the camp was set out and she lay down, tired, to sleep, she promised herself that, if she had a free moment on the morrow, she would go and see more of it.